Sure. It is the main thing that jumps out of the originality of your games design, and I wouldn't like to see every element, magical and physical, tied to rigid rules (which is the point and the elegence of the rules). In the old days there were lots of things that came up that could not be addressed by 'mechanics'. Take the man Pavis as an example, HOW did he get to be a half-elf, half-man? Right, so yer gonna have to throw away the RQ rulebook to get effects like this and make it up, but say his mother was a hero of Ernalda the Mother with 'Bless Mothers' and 'Mythology of Aldrya' both say around w3 and it all begins to make sense (the crazy woman! or was he an EWF experiment...). I love that about your system, and it's why I'd rather throw myself into Hero Wars without thinking about all those pages of stats that we'd have to deal with for RQ heroes (stats for powerful dudes and dudesses in Strangers in Prax and Lords of Terror come to mind)... but it's DIFFICULT because I don't know what to do with hundreds of unrelated skills feats etc. I don't mean "how good do i need to be with Ernalda : Bless Mothers using 'Bless Eggs' to make a chicken drop a Dragons Egg!?", but with some guidelines that tell us "well basically a Thunderstone is commonly a such and such..." would help everyone understand the day to day significance to yer average Orlanthi. This does not rule out the narrator allowing some weird and wonderful improvisational situations. I guess the basis of understanding Seven of Nine's 'Borg Technology' is based completely upon having seen Voyager at least a few times and 'There Is No Spoon' is pretty meaningless unless you've seen the Matrix (um... should that not be 'There Is No Fork'?). Or, in both cases, at the very very least read your fairly excellent descriptions! :o). But there are no similar descriptions for the likes of 'Sunset Leap'. Does 'Sunset Leap' = 'There Is No Spoon'? or is it closer to 'Borg Technology'? 'Sword Fighting' ~= 'Close Combat' ~= 'Warfare' is clear, and there is a lovely de-coupling of mechanics so that situations can be covered in a more fluid manner than in RQ where sometimes things could become a bit silly. ie. everyone in a castle walking about in Full Helms all day because of rumours of a Thanatari on the prowl with a garotte; and the poor wee Thanatari worshipper is only 50% with a dagger, while being a mighty 185% with his garotte skill, HW easily throws that out "hey boy, that Thanatari scum is a master assassin, ain't gonna protect you none clinging to that Full Helm for safety!...", but I worry a bit about the de-coupling becoming a de-railment with too many common situations being left completely undefined.
I think there should at least have been a Chapter 11 on Combat covering
common situations. I agree that there were, even in RQ with all its
mechanics, plenty of situations where we were winging it as the situation
required, but it would be nice to see a large section covering archery,
charging, more on berserking (showing say the rolls and modifiers for when a
chalana arroy tries to calm one down), horse combat. There are a lot of
warlike cults/aspects in the book/Gloratntha in general, so it is quite
important to describe these things in more detail to give a flavour for all
the different things that might happen but not to etch them in stone as it
were. I've heard from a c2k attendee that there may be some documents going
up on the glorantha site just simply running through sessions describing
exactly what each character was saying alongside the dice rolls that went
along with it. ie. showing the way that a player might try to use a
particular skill or feat and the way that the narrator modified the
particular situation. This may just make it all snap into place, but as far
as I'm concerned:
- from a roleplaying point of view the possibilities are much freer and so
more difficult to grasp (this is also a *good thing* IMO), and so...
- the more long and varied descriptions of play the better for a game like
this
- these should *not* be official rulings but more to get a good feel for how
to use the mechanics in a variety of situations.
I love the mythology, and it's important to the storytelling, characters understanding their place in the world or the difference between theism and animism, but it's also important that the common man knows how to be an Orlanthi and what it is to be an Orlanthi and how (and when) to fight or what to do when you're a devotee of Orlanth and you meet a solar devotee ("wandering sun, jealous uncle..." ...obviously!). After all, if yer gonna play Neo, it's important to know philosophically what 'There Is No Spoon' is (the mythology of the skill in the description that you gave), but it's also damn important that you gotta have described to you that you are not going to be allowed to wear a lurid red and green Hawaiin shirt with white shorts and sandals "Black clothes only please!, we are followers of 'There Is No Spoon'!". I think this is the cultural stuff analogous to the specifics of Bless Woad that I hope to see detailed in Thunder Rebels. Things like Sunset Leap can add spice, but every supplement having different skills leads to hundreds of skills that are essentially becoming less and less important, while a few skills basically conforming to a few situations like Close Combat become more dominant. I love page 64 of the rulebook in discussing flying. Not hugely rulesy, but flavours and defines it generally within the parameters of Glorantha. Doesn't mean that some fairly godlike Vanganth hero couldn't relocate a whole Sartarite clan to Pamaltela (fly Vanganth Airlines anyone?), but that's exactly the kind of Gloranthan info that really defines how player/narrator define their characters and use the rules in real play...
Tavener, Doyle W.:
> >The following statements are _not_ meant as sarcasm:
> >
> >It is a role playing game. We have _always_ just made it up as we went
> >along.
>
Wulf:
> Some of it, of course, but other bits had rules, constants,
> comparisons, mutually comprehensible breakpoints. These are all fewer
> and farther between in HW than in any other RPG I've tried.
yeah, and things like the big Community Participation Chart on p.244 kinda jump out at you "oi! what're you doing there!?..." :o)
Tavener, Doyle W.:
> >I am terribly, terribly sorry that you do not find Hero Wars to your
taste.
> >I regret that it does not suspend your disbelief the way Strike Ranks and
> >Rune Spells did.
>
Wulf:
> I'm sorry, you must be replying to the wrong message. Or making it up
> to suit your own prejudices. I certainly never said anything of the
> sort, and never have done. I have maintained from the start that the
> Extended Contest mechanic is one of the best I've seen in a game
> system, as a matter of fact.
I love the kernel of the system also. that's not really fair surely Doyle?... for me it's more about HOW are people / newbies gonna get into it and turn into insane monkeys on this stuff...
pardon the long postings... i'm gonna start a p.64 fan-club! ;-D
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